The days of the Yellow Pages are gone, consumers now find companies to do business with online. Before the internet if a water line in your house broke you might pull out your local Yellow Pages and start thumbing through the "Plumbers" section. On page one of that section you would find "A+ Plumbing", "AA+ Plus Plumbing", "AAA+ Plumbing" and so on. Every plumbing contractor wanted prominent placing in the book - they wanted to be the first plumbing company a potential customer would see. In addition any plumbing company could purchase quarter, half, and full page listings to try and stand out from among their competition. These listings and ads worked very well and they were very expensive.

Even though the expense was great, the Yellow Pages for most companies was their most efficient form of advertising because it allowed them to showcase their business to a unique market. Namely those consumers who had a need and were ready to make a purchasing decision "now". This consumer activity still takes place - it's just no longer done in the Yellow Pages - now this process happens online, in search engines such as Google.

Search Engine Optimization

More commonly referred to as SEO it's the process of getting your website prominent placing in the search engine result pages. Now if I live in Toledo and have a plumbing problem I get online and type in a search bar "Toledo Plumbers" and literally hundreds of pages of results are available to me. If the search engine has done it's job properly the results are ranked in relevance to my search term or "keyword" as they are referred to.

Most search engines including Google display 10 results per page. If I own a plumbing business I want to be at the top of those rankings, preferably in the top 10 (page one) which will give me the most visibility to people looking for a plumber. I can buy my way to the top by paying the search engines a fee for a top page listing, this is know as search engine marketing or SEM and is commonly referred to as PPC or pay-per-click. As with the quarter, half, and full page listings in the Yellow Pages, SEM or PPC can be very expensive as you're charged every time someone clicks on your link.

On the other hand SEO is relatively inexpensive. The focus with SEO is to make your website intrinsically more relevant to the search term or keywords thereby attaining higher organic ranking with the search engines. Search Engine Optimization is by far the most efficient use of marketing dollars, the return on investment (ROI) is measurable and it makes your company highly visible to those who are in the market today and ready to make a decision. At Taylored Web Results SEO is our primary focus. To learn more about our SEO services please visit ourSEO services page or contact us.